The Spanish Steps
The umbrellas, blotchy circles of colour stretched through the city; they wove and bumped int o each other and moved on, like the shifting pixels on an old videotape when she was ten years old and liked to sit right next to the television screen and toast her pajamas over the heating vent. Warm clothes would be nice now; three hours of frozen drizzle that Rome called weather had seeped into her bones. She stood at the top of the Spanish steps, in the shadow of the obelisk etched with words she couldn't understand, with a worthless camera weighing down her left shoulder, and she tried her best to capture the memory in her mind's eye: the coloured and patterned circles, each a symbol of a life, moving about its day without any recognition of her existence, of her position on this platform above.
She had been those people, she wanted now to rejoin them. The position of a traveler, to be in a city without being a part of it, was something she was finding tiresome.
She had been those people, she wanted now to rejoin them. The position of a traveler, to be in a city without being a part of it, was something she was finding tiresome.